The Bee Element

When we were kids, we could tell summer was fast approaching when the purple flowers from the jacaranda trees would begin to fall, making a thick blanket of purple petals on the driveway.

While beautiful in theory, and eye-catching from afar, in reality the flowers were cause for anxiety. We knew we’d soon be asked to complete the dreaded cleanup every weekend until the flowers had run their cycle.

The flowers, beautiful when dangling from a branch, would turn into dirty brown mush once on the ground and smashed by my parents routinely driving their cars over them. That mush was as slippery as socks on a timber floor, but more dangerously it would attract bees. Lots of bees.

It was with great fear on a Saturday morning when we’d have to clean the driveway, knowing that we’d be wading into bee territory. You’d have to have your wits about you — one wrong step and you could trap a bee under the arch of your foot, or terrorize a swarm that directed its attention to your ankle.

It was a bittersweet moment of spring. The bees were terrifying, but the chore also meant that summer was on its way. That meant it was also the last few weeks of school, which equaled freedom. And icy poles. And whole weekends spent in the pool.

As an adult, I still cringe when I see the first set of flowers fall. Now, though, the problem isn’t cleaning them off the ground. It’s picking them out from underneath my windshield wipers. Bees and all.

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Circular Quay on a sunny day under the canopy of jacaranda trees in Sydney, in October.CreditBrendan Esposito/Australian Associated Press